SADDAM DRAINED THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Boston Globe ^ | 4/1/2003 | Fred Pearce

[van_erwin]

Saddam Hussein turned a thriving marshland into a poisoned desert. Can it be restored?

The project, which has been discussed only in outline by scientists so far, would be the largest and most ambitious recovery of a wetland ever attempted. It might cost tens of millions of dollars or more, but could be a model for reviving many other natural water reservoirs as the world staves off growing water shortages.

[Eva]

I am afraid that we are witnessing an attempt for the left to gain a foothold in the re-building of Iraq.

[alloysteel]

And yet, and yet, they carried no protests to Baghdad. There is a hidden agenda here. Part of the reconstruction of Iraq will have to be diverted to restoring these marshlands, and failure to make this a primary goal will be made out to show that Bush and his Administration do not care about the environment. Not that Saddam Hussein was the primary reason that the environment was degraded in the first place.

All things in their own good time. It is not clear why the environmentalists would want the symbol of early roots of the Old Testament restored, as this gives validity to religious zealots. As everybody knows, those people, you know, the fundamentalist Christians and the orthodox Jewish, would place greater emphasis on making the "Garden of Eden" a reality.

[jiggyboy]

Once again, we see that roughly 10% of those polled are insane. 13% say we "owe" it to Iraq for "the damage we caused".

[jiggyboy]

Yah, but maybe we could give them round-trip tickets to go as "laborers", and then the airline declares bankrupcy.

[babaloo999]

Sounds like he's slightly anti-envirowhacko, as are many people on this forum. I see nothing in his post indicating pro-Saddamism.
Go easy on the alien mind control references, we all know the mind control rays are a product of our own government.
You think all these tin foil hat references are made for fun? I wish. LOL.

[sine_nomine]

"Farewell the Trumpets" is a masterpiece of history and literature. I love it.

Great poem.

Bring back the gnats, the Inferno heat and humidity.

[anymouse]

Egads, our troops liberate Iraq only to have the eviro-nazies chomping at the bit to seize the Iraqis land. Tell them to stand in line behind the UN, France and Germany.

[salmon76]

"Can it be restored?"

I don't mean to sound environmentally unfriendly, but do we have to turn it back into a swamp? You know, all those mosquitos, snakes and stuff give a lot of people the heebie jeebies.

Why not use it as farmland or something else productive?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

The Bible is quite clear that the Garden of Eden is at the source of the four rivers named - i.e. the headwaters, not their confluence. So it never would have been anywhere near lower Iraq

As some more astute observers have mentioned, it is highly likely that the rivers mentioned are mistranslations. It has been suggested that the Pamir Plateau, and the four rivers flowing forth from the "Roof of the World" are the actual location.

[Carry_Okie]

sorry, but you sound like one of those people that stands on a street corner with a sandwich board shouting about the alien mind control rays.

Although unnecessarily vitriolic, his post was accurate. The banning of DDT induced death by malaria, well over a million people per year (this is a deliberate understatement; many people in poor countries die of multiple causes, so death by malaria alone is hard to attribute). The advocates of the ban, including then EPA Secretary William Ruckleshaus who later went to head the Environmental Defense Fund for a fat salary, knew for a fact that the ban on DDT would have that result and they knew that the egg-shell-thinning gambit was a ruse.

Don't believe that? Here is a table of Audubon Society bird counts, before and after the introduction of DDT:

Audubon Society
Christmas Bird Count Data
1941 (2,331 Observers)
vs. 1960 (8,928 Observers)
Species	Count			Count/Observer		Ratio/Observer
	1941	1960		1941	1960		1960/1941
Eagle	197	891		0.08	0.10		1.18
Gull	124,470	635,642		53.40	71.20		1.33
Raven	667	2,669		0.29	0.30		1.04
Crow	185,519	250,307		79.59	28.04		0.35
Quail	2,060	10,276		0.88	1.15		1.30
Pheasant	6,839	19,731		2.93	2.21		0.75
Mounring Dove	7,411	72,958		3.18	8.17		2.57
Swallow	14,347	242,303		6.15	27.14		4.41
Grebe	2,501	27,826		1.07	3.12		2.90
Pelican	4,450	10,562		1.91	1.18		0.62
Cormorant	3,246	27,162		1.39	3.04		2.18
Heron	2,254	16,253		0.97	1.82		1.88
Egret	1,469	16,800		0.63	1.88		2.99
Swan	18,554	33,994		7.96	3.81		0.48
Goose	182,820	696,777		78.43	78.04		1.00
Ducks	2,137,093	2,739,517		916.81	306.85		0.33
Balckbird	137,502	20,552,375		58.99	2,302.01		39.02
Grackle	24,937	12,570,458		10.70	1,407.98		131.61
Cowbird	40,019	3,286,314		17.17	368.09		21.44
Chickadee	21,330	55,906		9.15	6.26		0.68
Titmouse	5,038	18,268		2.16	2.05		0.95
Nuthatch	4,214	13,439		1.81	1.51		0.83
Robin	19,616	928,639		8.42	104.01		12.36
English Sparrow	53,335	358,769		22.88	40.18		1.76
Bluebird	3,742	6,903		1.61	0.77		0.48
Starling	211,836	8,673,095		90.88	971.45		10.69
Sources:	42nd Christmas Bird Count			Audubon Magazine, 1942
	61st Christmas Bird Count			Audubon Field Notes, 15, 1961

My thanks to Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Entomology at San Jose State University, for collecting this information.

Those advocating banning DDT also knew that the organo-phosphate substitute was more toxic to the environment and to people. They did it anyway, in what may be the largest single act of mass-murder in the 20th Century.

The World Wildlife Fund was created using the money of British and Dutch Royals. GreenPIECE was (and is) populated with communists, but they are both funded largely by the same people.

If you want to know more about the principles underlying the environmental movement, and how free markets can do a better job for both humans and their surrounding supporting system of habitats, consider this book. There really is an alternative to government environmental management.

[Elsie]

 Genesis Chapter 2

 

 8.  Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.
 9.  And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
 10.  A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.
 11.  The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold.
 12.  (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.)
 13.  The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.
 14.  The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
 15.  The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
 16.  And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
 17.  but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

 

[Gothmog]

"It might cost tens of millions of dollars or more, ..." Yeah, it seems the greens, opposed to the greedy 'Bush war for oil' are now lining up for their take, like the scumbucket, yellow bottom-feeders they are. I think that 'tens of millions' should go to the families of US casualties or maybe the Iraqis before it goes to Hillary's friends.

[El Gato]

Why not use it as farmland or something else productive?

It was productive, else the Marsh Arabs wouldn't have lived there. Perhaps those parts that can not be restored can be converted to some other productive use. Farmland is doubtfull though...although I guess we could bring in the Dutch and give it a try. I suspect it's much too hot and gets too little rainfall, to ever be decent farmland. A marsh/swamp acts as a filiter, reducing the silt carried into the ocean for example.

Mosquitos can be controlled without draining the place. I've seen in my own home town the effect of draing the swamp, and it isn't pretty. This particular draining was done just after 1900, and the land isn't really good for anything, except houses, strip malls and so forth, but in most of it, those weren't built until the 1980, or 1990s. This is in the middle of the most productive farmland in the world. Oh, one large chunk was used as the city landfill, and is now a reasonably decent park, but not as nice as the mixed marshland and grasslands that were there before.

[RonF]

And yet, and yet, they carried no protests to Baghdad.

How do you know? Remember that the story says that the destruction was mainly for political reasons. Saddam simply ignored any protests.

There is a hidden agenda here. Part of the reconstruction of Iraq will have to be diverted to restoring these marshlands, and failure to make this a primary goal will be made out to show that Bush and his Administration do not care about the environment. Not that Saddam Hussein was the primary reason that the environment was degraded in the first place.

Let's just wait and see what happens, eh? I believe you're way off the mark.

All things in their own good time. It is not clear why the environmentalists would want the symbol of early roots of the Old Testament restored, as this gives validity to religious zealots. As everybody knows, those people, you know, the fundamentalist Christians and the orthodox Jewish, would place greater emphasis on making the "Garden of Eden" a reality.

There are many religious people who believe that we are supposed to be stewards of the earth. You are over-generalizing about the identity and motives of those favoring care for our environment. Support for a species that inhabits one small lake, and whose preservation halts benefits to tens of thousands of people is one thing. But there is broad support across the electorate for regulations that preserve clean air and water, and for preserving or restoring something on the scale of what we're looking at here.

[etcetera]

How ironic that Saddam drained the marshes to destroy his enemies and in so doing, created the very path which the forces of his destruction took to Baghdad.

[sergeantdave]

If I stand on a street corner with a sandwich board, I simply reflect the statements of hundreds of scientists, researchers and doctors, including Nobel prize winners in various scientific fields. Carry_Okie is essentially correct in his post - millions have died from malaria due to the actions of eco-fascists.

My definition of these characters as communists and fascists is correct. A bit of research on your part will help.

You might start with this from a well-known person in the conservation movement -

“The fall of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath also had an impact on this trend [movement to hard-line environmentalism]. Suddenly, pro-Soviet groups were discredited and the international peace movement was redundant. Many members of the left moved into the environmental movement bringing with them
their eco-Marxism and anti-establishment sentiments.”

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore

Also this -

"Environmentalism with its “Earth First!” arguments represents these days the “Leviathan Two” menace which may be more dangerous than old socialism."

Vaclav Klaus, former Prime Minister, Czech Republic (1992-1997), who lived most of his life in an oppressive communist regime.

So my assessment of the so-called environmental movement is not vitrolic nor over the top. The fact is that some people have not caught up to the latest scholarship that shows where, philosophically, the so-called environmental movement is rooted.

I'd suggest "The Green Wing of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents," by Peter Staudenmaier, to begin.

[blam]

Good rundown. I've read that UR, during the time of Abraham, was a coastal city and that during the last Ice Age, with the world's oceans 300-500 feet lower, these river valleys could have looked like the Grand Canyon. I don't remember how many miles inland Ur is now.

Further, I say, restore the marshes, if practical.

[thetruckster]

"I don't mean to sound environmentally unfriendly, but do we have to turn it back into a swamp? You know, all those mosquitos, snakes and stuff give a lot of people the heebie jeebies."

Only wimps are scared of mosquitoes and snakes. We get along fine with mutual respect. Swamps make for great hunting, birding, and picture-taking for the unafraid. And swamps are quite productive.

[pepsionice]

If the environmentalists knew this...why didn't they do something about it? Don't they even care? Or are they more concerned about George Bush to care what has happened here?

[buffyt]

Our town is only 60 years old, and this used to be a swamp. We still have the occasional alligator saunter into our neighborhood. The Game Warden sends out a crew and they round him up and haul him off to a less populated area... Here is what Lake Jackson was like in its beginning....

Lake Jackson celebrates turning 60
The Facts

Published April 06, 2003

LAKE JACKSON — Long gone are the days when Mary Barrington Stoddard had to pull off leaches after wading through waist-deep rainwater on her return from school in Lake Jackson.

Swamp lands that produced an abundance of hungry mosquitoes don’t nag Wanda Barrington Pursley as much as they did in the 1940s. And the blackouts that left Lake Jackson in the dark during World War II as planes flew overhead are now a part of LaNell Barrington Roberson’s memories.

But the Barrington sisters also remembered the fun they had growing up in Lake Jackson as they celebrated the city’s 60th birthday Saturday.

I am glad they drained THIS swamp! But it is still very green here and humid. No deserts around here! We are right on the Gulf Coast.